Many thanks to all who participated in Straight Key Night on OSCAR 2003.
Participation was up this year, producing a record 11 Best Fist winners, all
nominated by at least one operator they worked. Here's the list:

Saturday night, February 1, the DC-area folks had a little party to
commemorate Martha's
25th anniversary with AMSAT at W3PK's QTH. Tom Clark has made photos of the
festivities available at
http://www.pbase.com/tomcat/marthafest.

Although no official attendance was taken, Tom provided the following list
of participants.

FG (Guadeloupe), February 21-26. Wayne Estes W9AE plans to operate AO40
as FG/W9AE from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. The tentative plan
is to operate starting ~2300 UTC on February 21, 22, 25, and 26 for windows
to the Americas and the Pacific. Also on Sunday February 23 from 1500-2000 UTC
for a window to Europe and central Asia. Exact operating times
will depend on the RUDAK schedule and vacation activities. QSL to
Wayne Estes
18673 W. Meadow Lane
Mundelein, IL 60060
U.S.A.

The ARISS (a joint effort of AMSAT, the ARRL, NASA, the ARISS international
partners including Canada, Russia, the European Partners, and Japan)
operations team wishes to announce the following very tentative schedule for
ARISS school contacts. This schedule is very fluid and may change at the
last minute. Remember that amateur radio use on the ISS is considered
secondary. Please check the various AMSAT and ARISS webpages for the latest
announcements. Changes from the last announcement are noted with (***).
Also, please check MSNBC.com for possible live retransmissions
(http://www.msnbc.com/m/lv/default.asp).
Listen for the ISS on the downlink
of 145.80 MHz.

For information about educational materials available from ISS partner space
Agencies, please refer to links on the ARISS Frequently Asked Questions
page.

If you are interested in supporting an ARISS contact, then you must fill
in an application. The ARISS operations mentor team will not accept a
direct request to support an ARISS contact.

You should also note that many schools think that they can request a
specific date and time. It does not work that way. Once an application
has been accepted, the ARISS mentors will work with the school to
determine a mutually agreeable date.

The latest ARISS announcement and successful school list in now available on
the ARISS web site. Several ways to get there.
http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov
click on English (sorry I don't know French)
you are now at http://www.rac.ca/ariss/
click on News

Currently the ARISS operations team has a list of over 60 schools that we
hope will be able to have a contact during 2003. As the schedule becomes
more solidified, we will be letting everyone know. Current plans call for
an
average of one scheduled school contact per week.

There is a very active joint effort by RACES and SKYWARN to aid
government agencies (FBI, NASA, etc) with the identification, GPS
location cataloging and recovery of space shuttle components. Some of
the activities being conducted over the W5NAC repeater in Nacogdoches
TX. You can monitor the activity using Echolink's EDU_NET conference.-- Rick, W2GPS

The Intelsat 907 satellite was integrated atop its Ariane 4 in the
launch zone, marking the final major step in the vehicle's build-up. Liftoff
of Flight 159 is on schedule for the early morning hours of February 12.--SpaceDaily

Working in collaboration with David Altman, currently president of
Space Propulsion Group, and Brian Cantwell, a professor at Stanford, Arif
Karabeyoglu figured out a way to make paraffin burn three times faster than
had ever been achieved before--fast enough to serve as rocket fuel.--SpaceDaily

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego and its
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), Eureka-based Silicon Defense, the
University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit International Computer
Science Institute in Berkeley, found that the Sapphire worm doubled its
numbers every 8.5 seconds during the explosive first minute of its attack.
Within 10 minutes of debuting at 5:30 a.m. (UTC) Jan. 25
(9:30 p.m. PST,
Jan. 24) the worm was observed to have infected more than 75,000 vulnerable
hosts.[Don't ask me what this has to do with space. -webmaster]
--SpaceDaily